Neato:
The music that’s mandatory for this sort of thing, but that NASA somehow failed to use:
Oct 082022
Oct 042022
A YouTube video with a bit more imagery of the impact and the results…
Oct 032022
Bruce Willis, now famous for aphasia wiping out his ability to communicate and to act, has a new source of income:
Bruce Willis Signs Deal to Get Deepfaked Into Future Movies
The same company that bought the rights has previously added a Deepfaked Willis to TV commercials for a Russian phone company (before The War, of course). The results are… minimal:
It seems that the new agreement is based on “Die Hard” and The Fifth Element” era Bruce Willis… back when he had hair. Is this a good thing, or a bad thing? Well… it’s an inevitable thing, so it’s probably a good thing that we’re getting a precedent of a *living* actor signing up for this while they can do so willingly, and get paid for it. Soon there will probably be money to be made for regular folks to sit in a scanner and go through a range of motions and emotions and sell their Deepfake rights for X amount and Y royalties. Just the way it’s gonna be, I suppose, along with AI-created entirely original “human” actors. One presumed benefit will be a mangling of “celebrity culture,” since celebrities won’t be real people anymore. Some might argue that political campaigns will be able to Deepfake support from digital celebrities… but considering how consistently *stupid* celebrities are about politics anyway, it could hardly be worse. Will anyone *really* care what Marilyn Monrobot has to say about the 2028 Presidential campaign?
Of course, the article includes hand-wringing:
That doesn’t bode well.
…
While this should help Willis and his family earn extra cash, it’s an ominous precedent. With an already golden legacy and a filmography dense with classics like “Die Hard,” “Pulp Fiction,” and “The Sixth Sense,” is this really how Willis should be drawing out the end of his career?
…
But for the sake of both actors and moviegoers: let’s not have our stars replaced by lifeless reconstructions.
Meh. To my knowledge, there are no Deepfaked actors in “The Rings Of Power,” and Amazon spent a *billion* dollars to crank out a lifeless reconstruction of a psuedo-Tolkein story. So a sequel to “The Fifth Element” with a Deepfaked Bruce Willis? At this point I’d be far more likely to be concerned about a crappilly written story than a bad digital actor.
Oct 012022
“Optimus” is not exactly a Boston Dynamics masterpiece, but it’s certainly better than anything *I* could cobble together. Musk promises a ticket price of less than 20 grand. It’ll be interesting to see if U.S Robotics or NorthAm Robotics can match that.
Sep 302022
The Hubble and Webb space telescopes both observed the DART asteroid impact, and both saw distinct “streamers” in the ejecta. Which seems rather odd given that the asteroid appears to have been a loosely-assembled gravel pile, with nothing holding the ejected particles together… no surface tension, no magnetic fields, not even any appreciable gravity.
Webb and Hubble capture detailed views of DART impact
Webb’s view in near infrared:
Hubble’s view in visible light:
Sep 302022
So Russia has blamed the west for sabotaging the pipeline; everybody else on the planet blames Russia for sabotaging the pipeline. But there is another possibility. Consider, for a moment, the fact that the same culture of corruption, arrogance and vodka that gave us Chernobyl was also responsible for maintaining the pipeline.
Yeah. No sabotage needed to explain massive mechanical failures.
An interesting read full of things you probably haven’t considered:
Nordstream
Might be advisable to figure out of this was just a maintenance fail before people start nuking each other over it.
Sep 292022
Neato:
NASA, SpaceX to Study Hubble Telescope Reboost Possibility
Using the Shuttle for basic servicing missions was always kinda silly when all that was really needed was a guy in a suit, a few tools, a place to stand and some replacement parts.
Sep 282022
The images coming in of the DART impact are absolutely remarkable.
Same video as before of ATLAS observing the DART impact, but tracked sidereally (with the stars). Each frame is about 40 seconds, and the entire sequence is about two hours. pic.twitter.com/p7Sgvfu2CK
— ATLAS Project (@fallingstarIfA) September 27, 2022
The preliminary preview images from @LICIACube show the extent and shape of the plume from the #DARTmission Sept. 26 impact on asteroid Didymos' moonlet Dimorphos pic.twitter.com/VwUm096Yov
— Jason Major (@JPMajor) September 27, 2022
Here are some of the first images direct from the @LICIACube team at @ASI_spazio https://t.co/9LEIZA5SF7
— Jason Major (@JPMajor) September 27, 2022
A imagem que vocês estavam esperando chegou! Já acessamos os dados do @NASAWebb e montamos um timelapse do asteroide Dimorphos após a colisão com a missão de teste de defesa planetária #DART. #AstroMiniBR pic.twitter.com/DWQEnyW7x9
— Projeto Céu Profundo (@CeuProfundo) September 27, 2022
Dude. DUDE.
Sep 262022
This is what men can do when they strive for greatness using the precepts of western science: we can bullseye a 500-meter-wide pile of rubble from across the friggen’ solar system.
The plume was visible from Earth-based telescopes.
ATLAS observations of the DART spacecraft impact at Didymos! pic.twitter.com/26IKwB9VSo
— ATLAS Project (@fallingstarIfA) September 27, 2022
Check out these two different angles of the #DARTMission explosion taken from Earth observatories!! #nasa #asteroid #dimorphos #atlasproject #ssaosouthafrica pic.twitter.com/JyRrk74Fjs
— The Bind (@TheBindRocks) September 27, 2022
The Webb and Hubble telescopes were aimed at the impact, but I haven’t seen anything from them yet. Probably takes time to process.
Sep 252022
Well, in a way. In the way of “I need to hire at great cost artists to illustrate my graphic novel.” AI has now reached the point where a creditable graphic novel can be put together based purely on a long series of text prompts, using a consistent set of characters based on as few as five photos of an actual individual. You want the graphic novel version of “The Hobbit” starring Humphrey Bogart as Bilbo and Dom Deluise at Gandalf, done in the art style of HR Giger? Comin’ right up. “At The Mountains of Madness” starring Burt Reynolds and Gene Wilder, in the art style of Salvador Dali? No sweat. Any story ever, starring the Playboy Bunnies of 1972? On it. It’s not perfect… it seems to have a serious problem understanding hands and fingers, and there seem to be inconsistencies in shot to shot with costumes and such. But, dayum, this makes art *easy.*
This is honestly kinda startling. If I was a book/magazine cover artist… I’d be looking into exciting new career opportunities in the food service or housekeeping industries, cuz they’re gonna lose a *lot* of business. This could replace the standard storyboard for moviemaking. AI generated video won’t be far behind.